From Boston to Berlin: One Man's War in Letters

Crossing the Atlantic, in Reserve, Meurthe-et-Moselle

September 4 – October 21, 1944

American soldiers rest in their no-so-roomy compartment aboard a U.S. Army transport for their voyage overseas after boarding the ship. Associated Press Photo.

September 4

I had always thought that the day we went aboard ship would be a kind of special day, an event, a little more exciting, a trifle more dramatic; yet in fact it has been merely one more day in the Army, only more so.

We got up this morning long before the sun. We put the final touches on our duffle bags and packs. We ate breakfast. We shouldered our packs and walked a little way down the street. We waited. These many months in the army taught us patience. We waited.

Then we shouldered our packs again and marched to the train. We went aboard and the train pulled out and we heard a band playing. I looked out the window of the train and as I saw the New England woods speeding by, I said to myself, I will come back to all this.

The train took us right to the ship and we got off and stood in line. We waited. Red Cross women with the faces of Back Bay and deliberately cheerful smiles on their faces directed some girls serving us doughnuts and a cold drink. Then the band played and we went aboard; it was too much work struggling with the heavy duffle bag to think much about the meaning of the moment. No one looked backs as we went up the gangway.

I had expected crowded conditions aboard a troopship, but nothing like this. I suppose when you went to England you were on A or B deck and you rarely lost sight of the water, the waves, the gulls, and the porpoises playing alongside.

Imagine yourself six decks down; you are below the waterline. This, no doubt, was once a freight deck – it looks much like the freight decks on the ships Lew and I used to work. From deck to ceiling, and not including all the pipes and I-beams, it is perhaps eight or nine feet; the bunks are four high; they are too short for one of my height, just wide enough to hold a man, and crowded incredibly close together. Somehow in the few cubic feet allowed us we must stow our duffle bags, our packs, and, if possible, ourselves. The air is warm and fetid and reminds me of the holds of all the ships I ever worked. Everywhere there are men – in their bunks, in the aisle, the gangway, the latrines, reading, writing, but most especially sweating.

We eat off high tables from a standing position like people who’d just been learning to ride horseback. It’s even hotter in the mess hall than it is here. We have two meals a day and this doubtless will be ample, especially if we hit rough water. I don’t like to think what this dungeon will be like when men start getting seasick.

We’re to be allowed on deck two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, so I shan’t see much of the ocean. We won’t be playing any shuffleboard or sunning ourselves in deck chairs or served tea on deck at midafternoon.

I have a top bunk, which is lucky in several respects – a light, a little more room, and no one will be sick over me. Perhaps I can do some reading, and I’m sure I’ll do a lot of sleeping.

September 5

The sea is calm tonight. For that matter it’s been so all day. I can’t properly go with Dover Beach; I can’t see the _____ across the straight straits, like Mathew Arnold did. In fact I can’t see much at all except the inside of our dungeon.

So far on this trip I’ve quarreled five times with a steel bean that clears my chest, when I’m prone, by about 18 inches. The ship is staunchly made. By the end of the trip, I shall be a promising subject for a phrenologist; my bumps may not disclose my past or future, but they will describe eloquently my present.

As I say, it’s been calm all day – surprisingly so. It is rougher off Sakonnet¹ on a hot summer’s afternoon when the late wind comes in with the tide than it has been here. I don’t know when we shall use up our quota, but we can’t expect this to continue.

We went on deck this morning for our first two of four hours daily fresh air, we could see the ____ in the mists through which we traveled today. It’s a small _____ with a couple of _____ to do any nasty work with the submarine menace so thoroughly under control, I expect to see no undersea craft larger than a wolf pack of porpoises – and, who knows, even these may fly the American flag.

We had been told at our last station that there would be a recreation room and library on board. This was a pointless myth. I had counted on this for my reading, and as a result the only thing I have is Sabine’s History of Political Thought, a fine book but not without its limitations on a long voyage.

For three hours out of the day there is fresh water in the latrines – or, as we may say for these few days – the heads, and if you fail to connect with a wash basin or shower during those periods (with over 300 sharing the one small latrine this isn’t easy) you may have to shower with salt water – or go dirty. Did you ever try to get ordinary, inland, landlubber soap to lather in salt water? It is a very discouraging pastime. I haven’t dared to shave; I don’t want to earn a Purple Heart – and least of all in this fashion.

September 6

When we went on deck this morning our _____ had increased several fold, and the farthest _____ are lost in the mists that still prevail.

The weather continues excellent. This afternoon we began coming into some swells and a few people with tender stomachs are sick but it is still a very light sea, and the wind, such as it is, comes from the south and this seems to spell good weather.

I wouldn’t be an I & R man if I didn’t notice the direction our ship is taking with reference to the sun. A rumor as to our destination confirms my crude navigation by the sun. But so far we haven’t been told where we’re going. It’s pretty obvious where we’re not going and this at least is highly reassuring.

September 7

It’s been a warm day. We’ve been traveling through the Gulf Stream with a mild storm wind, gentle and warm. Most of the men who got sick yesterday were getting their sea legs today.

Today we’ve been bitching about the heat in the dark catacombs; tomorrow when we clear the Gulf Stream we’ll doubtless bitch about the cold. One thing is certain: we won’t be satisfied in this seagoing Black Hole of Calcutta.

There was little new on the ocean today. As the sun broke through the shadowy mist, the sea glinted darkly like rough wrought iron, the swirls of foam looked like green marble streaked with white. The fog shrouded the most distant _____ moved along with the slow and silent precision of a military funeral. I trust the analogy ends there.

I must take my salt water shower; though cooling as it may be, a few moments afterward I’ll be dripping sweat again.

September 8

I’ve probably read more mystery novels in the past month than I’d previously read in my entire life. While, unlike Mr. Justice Holmes, C.H. Driver, Val Lorwin,² and many others, I’m not a devotee, I find them useful as a literary narcotic…

We travel still through a warm and quiet sea. As I write sweat pours off me.

It must seem odd to complain of weather that, by any normal standards, is quite marvelous. Tonight at sundown, the sun glinted like molten copper in a path along the water, and the air was mild and warm. But to us this merely spells more heat in the ship’s bowels. I think Dante should have visited us before he wrote The Inferno.

Yet I’ve noticed that we somehow accommodate even to this. Nothing I’ve seen in the Army appalled me so much as the thought, the day we came down here, of spending 10 days or more in this hole. Now, after four days, I’ve adjusted a little more to it; I suppose one gets adjusted even to a concentration camp in time.

Thank God I enjoy reading. I can blot out this miserable substitute for living with a book; I don’t know what those men do who don’t enjoy reading.

As I look over what I’ve written, I detect a note of self-pity in this letter. It may not be as bad as it sounds; I get some pleasure simply out of bitching about it.

September 9

Another day ticked off. By now we have more or less of a routine to use of the time that hangs so heavy. We get up about 6:30 and line up for breakfast about seven; the line, a steaming, stinking, sluggish mass of tightly packed bodies, extends from the farthest bunks to the mess hall to decks above. Breakfast, once we get there, is a short affair. I’ve been meaning to note the lapse of time between the plop of the first bit of food on my tray by the first KP to the plop of the remains of the meal into a garbage can by the last KP I imagine it’s around five minutes.

After breakfast we must wait until 8:30 before going on deck. Then we crowd the rails until 10:30, and breathe in the fresh air and look at the slate gray water. We’re herded to our dungeon at 10:30 and there is a short inspection by some of the brass; we read, sleep, bitch, smoke, and bitch until 12:30 when we see the light of day again. This respite lasts for two hours; I usually try to squeeze into the latrine for my daily shave and wash (that’s about the maximum possible) about 2:30, and around three there may be an abandon ship drill.

We read, sleep, bitch, smoke, bitch, play cards, and bitch until supper, which is usually about five.

We go on deck again until seven, when we’re herded back to our nautical inferno for the night. Somehow one day succeeds another and no doubt the trip will ultimately end; this, at least, is the assumption we all go on.

The Army has generously provided us with phrase books of certain languages, and I’ve been assiduously studying one of these; so long as the natives display no originality of discourse I may be able to get water, buy a book, and find out where the nearest post office is. Should they thoughtlessly depart from my phrase book, I shall be in hopeless confusion.

September 10

It’s noticeably cooler tonight – a welcome relief…

September 11

I’ll miss not being at Ellen’s second birthday party; I hope I’m back for Peter’s first…

September 12

I’m looking forward to mail from you – to find out … the new activities and bright utterances of Ellen, the slow evolution of Peter into a human being, and all the other space dissolving details of your daily life.

September 14

Tomorrow will be Ellen’s birthday. I’ll want to hear all about it. I remember so vividly her first one a year ago – how she smeared Kathryn’s fine cake all over her face with such gusto. It was the first piece of cake she’d ever eaten, wasn’t it? Later, before she got too restless, we took her home and put her to bed. That was when I gave her Sgt. Bear, wasn’t it?

September 16

Leaving the ship was, as one might expect, very much like getting on it, only with everything in reverse. We interpreted this perhaps too literally. First of all, just as we had waited half a day for the boat to pull out after we went aboard, so in leaving it we had to wait in our cramped dungeon for almost half a day after the ship dropped anchor before we down in the nethermost hold could heave and sweat our way to the proper deck with our equipment pulling and dragging around us.

Then there was a fantastic little repetition of the business of rolling our packs. It was on a lesser scale this time; a matter of rolling a horseshoe roll, unrolling it, putting our raincoats in our packs, taking them out and putting them on, and then taking them off and putting them back in our packs. It’s a little incredible, when you think about it.

We went ashore in landing craft. This gave us a chance to see the extent of the destruction and the repairs, the buzz of activity in the harbor, the barrage balloons anchored overhead, and the debris along the waterfront.

The city was less damaged than I’d anticipated; most of the destruction was near the water’s edge. It was almost dark as our trucks began rolling through the narrow, winding, picturesque streets of the city, with the sturdy, graceful dwellings built to endure, tightly packed against the small corridor of a street, and occasionally a church in the distinctive Gothic tradition of the region.

Perhaps it was late for these people; perhaps they had deserted the city; perhaps they were afraid to venture out. For whatever reason, in the city itself we saw few people along the dark streets.

Soon we were in the country, and it was dark. The stars were out, and the air was cold, like a brisk fall night in New England. We chugged up a hill and looking back, we could see the lights of the city and the harbor, and I thought in what contempt we now hold German air power.

We went through several small towns. The first of these was marvelously intact – until we reached the center of town, and that was utter ruins, full of jagged walls and blasted roads and in the heart of the town a large stone church half open to the sky. It’s a terrible thought, but there’s a certain startling beauty to these gaunt and lonely jagged ruins standing awkwardly in the night.

We went through another town and it was totally destroyed and where the first one had been dead only in the heart, with life in the extremities, this town was utterly deserted and lifeless.

I must say I find the remaining houses attractive. They have rugged lasting quality given by the lines and the stone, as if these people meant to live here forever, as I’m sure they do. But they also have a sure, quiet grace that justifies the renown.

The fortunes of war are a little strange. We drive along a street with every house intact and suddenly come upon one lone building with its roof caved in or its walls smashed. Or we would stop for a moment between buildings that looked quite normal until you noticed where bullets had chipped off stone here and there around a window or a door. There are – or were – several farm buildings just across from our bivouac area. The ones on the ends are intact – or almost so; the one in the middle is a pile of shattered stone.

Of course we’re back to field living again; pup tents and C rations and shivering at night and shaking the dew off your shoes in the morning; but on the whole this is a better life than that in garrison when there are so many stupid things to be done.

And there are new things, too. Sometimes, along the roadside there will be a sign with a deathshead on it and the warning Minnen or in English perhaps Clear of mines to shoulders; we have been warned of booby traps in the nearby brush and have already found a dud and a charge in our bivouac area, and not far from here the body of a German soldier was found in the bushes a day or two ago.

This morning (before I learned we couldn’t stray from this area) I went to the house across the road to ask in my halting, impoverished French, for some firewood. A little middle-aged woman and a girl were dusting over their door, evidently undisturbed by the fact that the hole in their roof was covered with canvas, and the roof on one end of the house had lost all the slate shingles, and next door, a few steps away, what had been a house was a roofless, wall-less ruin.

Incidentally, I didn’t get the wood. She said it was impossible and I understood why, for firewood is a scarce item here and it was thoughtless of me to ask. She said a lot of other things too, but didn’t understand what…

I’m afraid I haven’t anything for Ellen’s birthday except gifts to myself – memories of her party last year, of her sitting up in bed and sleepily recognizing me the last time I came home, of her learning to play hide and seek in Olympia…

September 17

I’d no sooner finished yesterday’s letter than we had mail call and I got a letter from you…

…I’m not altogether flattered that Ellen should draw me with such enormous feet – though I must admit it proves she’s damned observing. However, she wins me back again by her solicitude over poor daddy at camp. If she knew how cool and damp it gets here at night she would probably say, Poor daddy – freeze.

…Tonight a handful of us began a class in French under the tutorship of a local school teacher. He is a small man in his thirties with a tiny moustache and a pleasant pedagogical manner and a good knowledge of English grammar but not much of pronunciation, and I think he couldn’t possibly be anything but a school teacher and a Frenchman – yet, who knows, perhaps he was a member of the underground when the Germans were here. One never knows.

The class was held in a tiny classroom with desks and benches for children, and I felt a little cramped, like the time when I was in the fifth grade and my teacher sent me back to the first for an afternoon because I suddenly discovered how to whistle with my fingers in her classroom. My feet stuck yards into the aisle.

I’m afraid I shall never master any kind of French pronunciation. I think I’m one of those people who could live in a country for 10 years and still speak the language with an atrocious accent. This is one proposition I hope I shan’t have to test.

September 18

Besides being a day with no mail for any of us, it’s been raining off and on since this morning, such as it used to do in Ft. Lewis. I suppose my spirits should be dampened, though the most I can honestly complain of is that my feet are wet.

The men have been raising their spirits by looking at the two or three dead Germans moldering in the hedgerows; they seem to derive a certain ghoulish pleasure from the pastime, and in the absence of better entertainment, I suppose it will do. An alternative is to make friends with the local farmers and get drunk on their hard cider. I haven’t done either so far, but I suppose if time begins to rub like a stiff shoe on my nerves, I shall do both. Dunlap, who always managed to get coffee or ham and eggs or bread and jam if these were available within a radius of 25 miles, hasn’t allowed the barrier of language to interfere with his foraging and reported this morning that he had food and cider galore at one of the local farmhouses last night. Incidentally, he reported that the girls are quite unassailable, and even suggested that French-American relations might be damaged if he were to be too forward in this respect. Coming from him that is all rather amazing.

The farmers (should I call them peasants? It’s a word that sticks in an American’s mouth) are prosperous relatively, and, from the accounts, eat foods that even well-fed Americans would envy them for. I’m sure this isn’t typical of the rest of France.

There are persistent accounts of snipers hidden in the area, but I’m inclined to lay much of this to (1) exaggeration and (2) the settling of old grudges. I’m being perfectly candid when I say that I’m safer here than I would be crossing a New York City street – and, assuming I couldn’t be with you in either place, this, to my mind, is infinitely preferable, I should add that I say this less because I like this then because I detest NYC so much – or didn’t you know?

It’s a beautiful spot here, or would be, were you with me to share it. Our company bivouac area is in a small field marked off with hedgerows and covered with lush green grass; we’re on a slight, rolling hill, and there is a narrow winding road twisting gently down the slope, and along the road are the sturdy stone houses with their tile roofs and shuttered windows; and it is quiet here, very quiet, except for the sudden clatter of an occasional two-wheel cart pulled by a horse and carrying some farmer or his family to town or home. Were it not for the abrupt, decisive reminders – a shattered house, a dead German soldier, a booby trap, an abandoned machine gun, a thick flight of B-26s overheard – one wouldn’t believe that war was here only a short while ago and shattered the quiet of this peaceful countryside. The people who went through it won’t forget so quickly.

My candle has burned out. I write by flashlight. In the quiet night I hear a locomotive whistle at the nearby crossing. Not long ago there was a fierce battle at that crossing.

September 20

… I miss Ellen; I even miss Peter, whom I scarcely know, because I want to share with you his baby days…

September 21

I just returned from an evening stroll for cider. I think the French got the best of the bargain, for in a fit of inflationary generosity three of us gave our hosts two packages of cigarettes, some candy, and a sack full of Bull Durham for three glasses of cider apiece. The conversation reached an intense pitch tonight, for I managed to ask the name of their dog and learned to my great satisfaction that she (I assume it was she) is called Fifi. After that I had about depleted my reserve of brilliant expressions and they grew bored and wandered into the house, leaving us the courtyard, the darkness, the smell of horses – and Fifi, who was also bored and soon left us.

We came back here and found hot coffee with – no less – cream and sugar awaiting. You can see what a sybarite’s life we lead here – football, cider, hot coffee, rapier-like conversation, and Fifi. I mustn’t forget the third blanket that was issued to us tonight to insure that we remain the best paid, the best fed, best clothed, best housed soldiers in the world; if we could only have mail, now, we would be almost as well off as the German PWs at Camp Phillips.

September 25

I think the evenings are the worst part of the days. It gets dark early, and when, like tonight, there is a fine, dripping mist in the face of the wind, there is little one can do but crawl into his pup-tent and lie there thinking, or perhaps just lie stupidly in a half-doze like an old wet dog.

Our French class helps a little, though even that must end by 7:30 because the little schoolroom with all the windows gone gets so dark that we can no longer see the writing on the blackboard. I can kill some time around the fire, when the weather is more congenial – singing, arguing, dreaming, drinking coffee if they have it. Sooner or later you have to return to your pup tent and go to bed.

I get so much sleep these days that you’d think I’d had trouble falling asleep at night. Often I say to myself as I crawl under the blankets that I’ll do some heavy thinking about Aristotle or Seneca or St. Thomas Aquinas – and next morning I don’t remember a single thought from the time I straightened my legs out and relaxed.

I’ve spent some time reading various announcements posted for the inhabitants at the mairie across the road, a sort of city clerk’s office, I should say. These confirm my feeling that much of the opposition to De Gaulle based on his potentialities as a dictator quite miss the point of French politics – France has always been much more endangered by her excessive individualism than by any tendency to let one Frenchman run another. These announcements are, many of them, eloquent, temperate, and democratic. One of them in particular, posted shortly after liberation, calls upon the people to pay tribute to the forces of resistance; to work hard for the allied cause and national resistance; promises full punishment to all pro-Nazis, but asks that there be no individual reprisals as these violate the spirit of French justice; and announces that elections will be held as soon as France is liberated.

September 26

I lost 50 francs today. It was my first transaction in French currency, and my only error was to allow my loyalty to my platoon to sway me into betting 50 francs that they would win today’s baseball game. They lost. I lost.

It wasn’t as if I’d bet a month’s pay. The franc, at the current rate, is worth just two cents, so my losses were only a dollar.

I exchanged five dollars for franks the other day; and it’s difficult to take seriously the clean, new, flimsy paper I received; it reminds me too much of the bunk-money we used to play with at the Days of ’98 dances in Skagway; there we received $100 for the price of admission, which, as I remember it, was a dollar. I always lost my hundred, no matter what I played – roulette, blackjack, or craps, and I’ve never gambled since, except for occasional bets like the one today. I’m glad I win on the important things…

From now on we shall be paid in francs. Not that it really makes a difference. There’s no way to spend money. When they told us before we left the States to reduce our monthly take to $10.00 they were giving sound advice. Right now it’s difficult to see how I could spend even that much.

September28

I had intended to write you last night telling you about our food, a subject which I haven’t mentioned much in detail.

Our first few days here before our kitchen was set up, we had the inevitable C rations and K rations, a more interesting individual meal. After the kitchen was established, we began eating B rations; these are dehydrated foods for the most part, or meats like canned corned beef, which the Brazilians seem to be unloading on us in return for Lend-Lease – leaving the situation, in my opinion, still a strictly one-way matter. Recently we’ve been getting one A ration meal a day; this is regular field ration – fresh meats and vegetables. And last night for our A ration meal, we actually had turkey.

I was going to write you this as further evidence that our life here, within the rather substantial limits of living in the field with an ocean between us and home, is pretty soft. But I must have over-eaten on turkey or played volleyball too soon after eating, for in my French class last night I began feeling the unmistakable warnings of a stomach in revolt; I barely managed to reach the latrine in time to regurgitate my fine turkey dinner. I turned in immediately, slept 11 hours, and today I’m in fine shape again.

September 28

Today we got our weekly ration of candy, gum, and cigarettes; it’s also supposed to include soap, toothpowder, and the like, but today there wasn’t enough to go around. We each get seven packs of cigarettes a week, a half dozen candy bars, and a package of gum. Today we also got one razor blade, since a blade is good for about two shaves, I’m a little confused, for this implies that we shave twice a week – whereas it is not only implied by required that we shave daily (not, of course, that we always do).

For us pipe smokers there is a little problem, first because one package a week isn’t enough, and second because when pipe tobacco became free almost everyone, it seems, found out that he smoked a pipe, so there wasn’t enough to go around. Your six packages a month will completely solve the first problem and we have finally segregated the genuine from the spurious pipe smokers to solve the other problem.

I traded all my cigarettes for candy, at the rate of exchange of two bars of candy for one pack of cigarettes. For one who lately complained of an upset stomach, you would probably be disturbed to see the rate at which I’ve been eating my candy.

When everyone had his ration our company area sounded rather like a Chinese marketplace (or at least what I suppose a Chinese marketplace to be like). Old Golds for Camels; Old Golds for Camels! Luckies for Chesterfields; who’ll trade Luckies for Chesterfields! Cigarettes for candy, cigarettes for candy!

I found that the facts of this market didn’t fit at all the classical theory of a uniform market; I was getting two candy bars for cigarettes, someone else was trading one for one, while one cut-price competitor was spoiling the market by trading two cigarette packs for one candy bar.

Did I every mention, by the way, that the kids over here smoke cigarettes with a deft, professional air from the age of five on up?

September 29

Tonight four of us went out looking for a German machine gun which had been in the possession of a local farmer; and while we didn’t get the gun, it wasn’t altogether a wasted evening.

The German machine gun is a splendid weapon – especially the 1934 model, designed and machined before their shortages of tools and skilled labor forced them, in their ’42 model, to rely more on stamped and pressed parts. It’s a common practice for our troops to add this weapon, when it’s captured, to our own excellent supply of arms.

Danny Roberts had told me of a farmer who wanted to get rid of a German m.g. We were anxious to have it for the platoon and tonight we got a jeep and went after it.

To our disappointment, other soldiers had been there before us and the m.g. was gone. Nevertheless, the farmer, who had a huge stone house and a wall to keep the curious away, not to say two or three loudly barking dogs, invited us in for the ever-flowing cidre, an invitation which required no urging. He sat the four of us down at a polished table in the dimly lit room that constitutes, I suppose, the main room of the house. One wall was almost filled with awards for the fine sheep the man raises.

He brought out the cider and we kept up a conversation, somehow; he spoke slowly and simply, out of consideration for my poor French and we managed to understand each other, if not always on the first attempt. It seems that the battery of his car (this, too, marks him off as a pretty prosperous sort) is run down and he wondered if we could start it for him. We agreed to see what could be done, and with this he brought out the cognac, which is kept pretty well under cover here. The cider they give away freely; of the cognac they usually say the Boche got it all, a statement probably more designed to ward us off than to convey the truth of the matter.

When we tossed it down like one might a finger of whiskey he explained that the French drank it slowly, sipped it and talked, and I felt a little embarrassed at my bad manners, for, as a matter of fact, I prefer it the same way; but ignorant foreigners like us cannot be expected to know the French customs, so his statement wasn’t a criticism, merely an observation.

Their cognac is liquid fire, there is wisdom in drinking it slowly. However, he gave us only a nip, so your husband, to his regret, remains entirely sober.

The Germans left a good bit of equipment behind as they rushed out of here; most of the good stuff – rifles, m.g.s, etc. – has been packed up, but the quantity of small arms ammunition, hand grenades, mortar shells, and the like is surprising. In anticipation of our m.g. we fished out a good many belts of ammunition that they’d dropped in their positions. I’m afraid we won’t be able to use it unless we can get another m.g. lined up. Our ammunition and theirs is not interchangeable, since ours is .30 (inches) and theirs is .312.

In their small arms ammo we’ve found the usual variety, from armor piercing to tracer – and for the first time in my life, I’ve seen cartridges with wooden pellets. What their intended use was, I don’t know. Once the Japs were reported using